IIW History 1990-2015

As a prelude to this immense phase of building structures, a need for the construction of transportation systems became more apparent for economic and commercial reasons in the supply of goods and services between nations. The globalisation of trade and industry over the last 25 years necessitated great investment in port facilities, particularly in South- East Asia, where Shanghai and Singapore were ranked in first and second positions among the leading ports in the world, based on cargo and container traffic. 13 During this last decade, one of the corner stones of IIW’s emphasis on quality management has been to identify and transfer global best practices in the field of quality management for welding and to successfully apply this to a wide range of infrastructure projects. This largely has been achieved through the resources of the Select Committee Quality Management in Welding and Allied Processes (SC-QUAL), which played a strategic role in the development and implementation of quality standards and guidelines for welding in the construction and fabrication industries, including the requirements for personnel and company certification. In this regard, the qualification of welders and welding procedures has proven to be one of the bestmeans of ensuringquality requirementsweremet, not only in construction across ships and port facilities, but also in most infrastructure projects. Both Det Norske Veritas and Lloyds Register of Shipping have also had a profound influence inmaintaining quality in projects by ensuring that the highest levels of classification, certification and technical assurance are applied across wide sectors of the maritime, energy

The latest change in the building of large ships has been a trend towards the construction of bigger container ships for world trade distribution

MEETING CHALLENGE – THE WAY AHEAD